Mobile display ad rates dropped 26 per cent in 2015: Adobe

Adobe has released its annual Best of Best (BoB) report, which looks at how companies using the Adobe Marketing Cloud are faring when it comes to digital marketing.

According to the report, ad rates for digital inventory fell by 26 per cent in 2015. We asked Tamara Gaffney, Principal Analyst, Adobe Digital Index at Adobe, whether this trend would continue to be seen. In her opinion, this would be a huge problem for digital advertising on the mobile in the coming years. The reasons according to her are, “Brands need to understand customer journey. The problem is that we cannot measure when a transaction occurs. There are too many devices (in the customer journey) and we cannot track across devices.”

This, indirectly leads to another issue; that of demand. Gaffney is of the opinion that advertisers are still shy of investing in mobile because of the afore-mentioned reason. The mismatch in demand and supply is further resulting in lower ad rates, says Adobe.

“Marketers do not know how to monetize mobile advertising and till the time you (marketers) figure this out, it will be a problem,” said Gaffney.

Another major issue that brands need to contend with, according to the Adobe research, is the efficiency of display ads. According to the Adobe study----37 per cent (the fifth largest reason) of users alluded to advertisements as a reason for negative web experiences.

“Brands are in serious danger of ruining awareness building advertising by overdoing display advertising,” said Gaffney.

When asked about the falling ad rates, Gaffney said that Adobe expects this to continue for the next 1-2 years. In terms of individual display units, Gaffney said that Facebook display ads were doing better than Google display ads though YouTube display ads had the best performance.